Announcement

In the first week of January, the Aragon Association decided not to continue funding Autark due to breach of the grant agreement.

However, the Aragon Association decided to still provide them with three months of runway so they could look for other sources of funding. We also offered them help in fundraising and applying to other grant programs.

We didn’t intend to negatively impact Autark’s reputation or possibilities of alternative funding by bringing this to the public attention, but Autark has requested a settlement of $800k and also wrote a misleading version of the story publicly. On top of that, we were made aware of other products that they had been working on using the Association’s funding that were not in benefit to the Aragon community at all.

Autark fully delivered one of their thirteen deliverables, Open Enterprise. Open Enterprise accounts for less than 0.015% of the assets under management in Aragon organizations.

Breach of contract

After multiple threats from the Autark team to sue the Aragon Association, the Association carefully reviewed their work and involvement in the community and decided to initiate litigation to finally resolve the dispute after months of stalled negotiations.

As it was mentioned before, out of their thirteen deliverables, they only fully delivered one.

Apart from that, other reasons that lay beneath Autark’s breach of agreement are:

Interpersonal issues (including threats)

Underperformance

Lack of code quality

Breach of confidentiality (including defamation)

App mining

Because of Autark threatening to sue the Aragon Association, and Autark deciding that the Aragon Association should route all communications with their attorneys, the Aragon Association wasn’t in a position to invite Autark to participate in this app mining’s round.

Path forward

On a personal note, we’d like for the community to be able to focus on product-market fit for Aragon.

Grants are among the best kinds of funding for founders in the space.

Autark received a total of $750k from the Aragon Association, which is comparable to a seed or even Series A round in the startup world. Also keep in mind that they had no dilution or board control like in normal fundraising markets.

We are disappointed with their reaction, especially knowing the generosity that went into offering them $250k plus the $75k they had left in the bank. $325k is a lot of money, especially in the biggest recession in decades.

We unsuccessfully tried to talk to Autark founders about an amicable solution, but they rejected all of our attempts.

We hope we can decide on a clear path forward to get this matter resolved, so we can all focus on building the future of organizations.

The Aragon Association is a Swiss non-profit supporting the Aragon project

The Aragon Association is a non-profit entity based in Switzerland supporting the Aragon project. Read more at https://aragon.org/association

The Aragon Association is a non-profit entity based in Switzerland. It is the legal steward of the Aragon project and is responsible for managing the funds raised in the Aragon Network Token sale. Read more at https://aragon.org/association

The Aragon Association is a non-profit entity based in Switzerland supporting the Aragon project. Read more at https://aragon.org/association

The Aragon Association is a non-profit entity based in Switzerland. It is the legal steward of the Aragon project and is responsible for managing the funds raised in the Aragon Network Token sale. Read more at https://aragon.org/association